"When you look at the list there are only six dames and you realise just what an honour it is when you consider how few people have these.

"I've always been a team player and it's a tribute to all the people I have worked with other the last few years. It's them that enable you to get the honour."

Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and former head of its school of electronics and computer acience, has influenced the subject's development through her academic and research work as well as by playing a prominent role in science and technology policy.

She said she wanted to use her new status to encourage more young people to go into computer science.

The recent financial collapse would offer a huge opportunity to entice people with science and engineering degrees back into the subject and might tempt bright graduates away from the City, she added.

"It's about making it a more attractive prospect – you can change the world with this subject."

In 2003, Hall was appointed president of the British Computer Society, the UK's professional body for IT, before becoming the first woman senior vice-president of the Royal Academy of Engineering two years later.

In 2006, she was one of the founders of the Web Science Research Initiative, along with Prof Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, Prof Nigel Shadbolt and Daniel Weitzner.

They are pioneering the new discipline of web science, to develop a better understanding of the architectural principles that led to the web's growth and success, and ensure that these support the web's future development.

In July 2008, Hall took up office as president of the Association for Computing Machinery – the first person from outside north America to do so in the organisation's 60-year history.

Hall is also on the prime minister's Council for Science and Technology, and a founding member of the European Research Council's scientific council.

Hall said the honour was great for computer science. "I don't think computer scientists get the rewards they deserve, when you think that computers are what run the world at the moment," she said.

"Whether I get to be more influential as a result, I have yet to find out but I hear that the status means more people want you to be involved in what they're doing.

"It's a great recognition that computer scientists do both science and engineering. It's very important that society recognises what we do is what makes the world work these days.

"The people in charge need to listen to the experts in the area to understand why large scale public IT projects fail," she added. "They need to recognise the experts more than they do at the moment.

Hall hopes she is a role model for computer science as a subject as well as for women.

"We're not encouraging enough young people to do science and engineering and we're on the verge of changing that.

"Scientists and engineers are the future – innovation is based on it – and we have to get young people to want to work in that world and not just use the results of it."